or 'I have the most awesome friends'. My birthday was last thursday, so I'm now thirty-something years old. But I feel young, because my friends gave me a gift certificate to Indie Press Revolution. And now I'm flipping thorugh their online catalogue trying hard to choose what games to order.

So far the list looks like this:

• In a Wicked Age (The concept thrills me, I want to know what's inside) 
• Donjon (Seems like a lot of fun) 
• Bliss Stage (A lot of talk about this one, although I'm not very familiar with it) 
• Cold City (Another one I don't know too well by reputation) 
• Hot War (Like Cold City) 
• Dogs in the Vineyard (entry by Vellu, I think I should read this game just to know what it is about)

If you have any other suggestions or want to tell me more about some of the games already listed, that would probably help me choose. Thanks.

I've been skimming over the archives of the Sons of Kryos podcast (by Jeff, Judd and Storn) in the past few weeks. There are lots of really useful stuff and I thought that I should break some of my finds out for you.

The first podcast of Sons of Kryos was published in July 2005. There have been 62 podcasts since. Each podcast consists of three or four sections each lasting about 15 minutes. In my recap effort I'm now in the third season, somewhere around episode 40.

The only drawback of the Sons of Kryos podcast is that the starting times of different sections in the individual podcasts are not marked in the archives. Here I'm trying to give approximate numbers for those, also.

This is similar effort to the Cull blog where Ryan Stoughton recaps different rpg blos and podcasts and tries to point to the most bestest material. My effort here differs in that I haven't even listened to every Sons of Kryos podcast and my selections are simply a result of my personal interests right now. Regardless, I hope this is useful to you.

A short list of my recommendations, the full descriptions follow in full text:

• Episode 12, section I: Bangs (At the beginning)
  
• Episode 12, section 3: Inspired Games (Starts at 30 minutes) 
• Episode 15, section 1: Good sentences - This is what the game is about (At the beginning)
• Episode 15, section 2: Stakes (Starts approx. at 15 minutes) 
• Episode 18, section 2: How to Start a PTA Game (Starts at 23:40)
• Episode 27, section 1: Managing Screen time (At the beginning)
• Episode 35, section 2: Good sentences - No (Starts at 16 minutes) 

As in theatres where real people perform on a stage. That's how I've felt for a long time now. Both the psychological science fiction stories and the galaxy destroying time-warping speculative black hole physics stuff, too. Imagine how cool it would be.

The thing is, most of the theatre world isn't into sci-fi or they just outright feel like sci-fi is not for the real stage. The day I first realized this was when I got feedback for my dramaturgy assignment from my professor in the applied drama classes. I had dramatized William Gibson's Hinterlands. She noted that she hadn't ever thought about dramatizing science fiction nor had anyone else dramatized a piece of sci-fi as an assignment. She also seemed to be surprised by the themes explored in the piece, as if serious theme exploration in science fiction was something she did not know existed. And she probably didn't know such a thing existed as well.

I think that many works of science fiction would prosper on stage. The scale of some of Alastair Reynolds' visions combined with the presence of actors to convey the effect of those massive-scale events is something I dream about frequently. Other works, such as William Gibson's newer novels and Ballard's Super-Cannes, for example, would serve as ideal vessels for exploring the values in contemporary society and its future outlook. And the strength of putting it on stage in theatre would be to ground it in human experience provided with the actors present in the same space as the audience.

This was today's sermon. Go in peace, my brothers and sisters.

Efemeros, a Finnish role-playing article collection has been published last week. The collection contains two articles from Sami Koponen (also the editor of the collection) and an article each by Wille Ruotsalainen and Eero Tuovinen. The article collection is available only on paper, only in Finnish and can be ordered here (in Finnish). It costs 20€.

Comparing different methods of rolling dice in terms of their results can be an exhausting exercise, especially if you are an approbatur-level mathematics drop-out student like me. Luckily Torben Mogensen has developed Troll, a language for describing dice roll mechanisms, as well as an interpreter which also calculates the probabilities between the different alternatives in the mechanics described.

Simply put, Troll handles every kind of dice, every kind of roll, (almost) every kind of mechanic. You name it, you can do it in Troll, and test it in the interpreter. The primary entities in Troll are rolls (2d6) and numbers ("4") which can be combined with all manner of arithmetical (-, +, *) and logical (<, largest etc.) operations. It also supports variables (d6*d6 is different than x=d6, x*x). You can also use if-then-else structures, functions, repetitions and the whole kitchen sink.

I cannot say enough praising words about this creation. It is exactly what one needs when designing an/or tweaking a game with dice roll based resolution. A classic. Anyone not using this should seriously stop anything they're doing right now and take a look. Torben Mogensen's page on Troll, with links to the interpreter and its manual.

A tiny disclaimer: You need to learn about arithmetical and logical operations a little bit to use Troll efficiently. If you can write code, you'll be ok. If you are a mathematician, you'll do ok. If you can do formal philosophical logical operations, you'll learn this very quickly. Otherwise, just take a look at the examples in the excellent manual.

New plans, projects and games are a definite sign of Autumn. And, as I've hooked up with people for two potential new rpg games, taken up board gaming (El Grande session yesterday) and the movie club is starting again, it's clear to me that we've heading onwards after a rainy Summer. Now I just need to take up knitting and boatcarving to fulfill my heart's desires.

For me the New Year's resolutions have been a thing of the past for a while now - I think that people make more promises to themselves after the Summer. Students promise to rack up credits in a way they've never done, holiday spenders and drifters promise to become well-earning pension-saving citizens again etc. I promise to take up social and sporting activities again after a free-flowing Summer.